Ohio’s minimum wage is scheduled to increase by 15 cents an hour to $8.10 on Jan. 1.

The increase will boost the wages of more than 250,000 Ohioans. The minimum wage of workers who receive tips will increase 7 cents to $4.05 an hour.

Voters in Ohio approved a constitutional amendment in 2006 that calls for annual increases in the hourly wage.

A nonprofit policy group has estimated that the wage increases will produce $36 million in economic growth from higher consumer spending. Another policy group says that nine of the state’s 12 most common occupations pay less than $10 an hour.

Ohioâ€™s minimum wage rises every year in tandem with inflation, but some lawmakers say the rate is still too low. One legislator wants to hike it up by more than two dollars.

Democratic Representative Bob Hagan of Youngstown wants to increase Ohioâ€™s minimum wage to $10.10. The current wage is at $7.95â€¦ but Hagan says thatâ€™s too low for families who are trying to pay for food and housing.

One perception could be that a large portion of those on minimum wage are high schoolers, but the representative says teenagers only make up 12.5%.

Hagan: â€œThe rest are adults who are trying to make a living with their families. Itâ€™s increasingly more difficult to do that with what weâ€™re giving them right now.â€

Though Haganâ€™s bill faces a Republican-controlled House, he says heâ€™s encouraged that some high-profile conservatives such as former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney are coming out in support of raising the minimum wage.

The right-leaning Employment Policies Institute has released a report saying the Democrat-backed proposal to take the minimum wage for waitresses and other tipped employees from $2.13 $6.86 per hour would cost Ohio at least 11,441 jobs.

A right-leaning think tank is touting a new report they say shows Ohio would lose more than 11,000 jobs under a plan to more than triple the hourly minimum wage for tipped employees.

More than 100 House Democrats, including Dennis Kucinich, Marcy Kaptur, and other Ohioans have argued for the tipped minimum wage increase from $2.13 to $6.86 an hour.

It would be the first time Congress changed the $2.13 an hour wage since 1991.

But Mike Saltsman with the Employees Policies Institute says an increase in the tipped minimum wage would cost jobs, and could actually lower wages.

â€œLetâ€™s say you have a restaurant, like theyâ€™ve down in Washington State, that has servers, maybe cuts the numbers of servers or has severs work on larger table sections so theyâ€™re more stretched. The opportunity to earn tip income could actually decrease and go down.â€

Ohioâ€™s has a tipped minimum wage of $3.85 an hour. The Democrat-backed bill is NOT expected to move out of the GOP-controlled House.

“What we find is that not only the minimum wage earners get an increase when the wage rate goes up, but also those just above the minimum wage rate. From employers who tend to like to stay above the minimum rate wage, we see raises from them, as well,” said Burga.

The AFL-CIO in 2006 helped put a proposal on the Ohio ballot and voters approved the amendment to raise the stateâ€™s minimum wage, and add a yearly cost-of-living adjustment.